Did you hear about so folks at a Navy lab stating they had proven or discovered or seen cold fusion? Thats cool.

I'll guess we'll have to see if anyone else can duplicate their results.
That was why the Fleishmann-Pons study fell into discredit.
Other researchers were unable to reproduce the results.

Meanwhile there is already a device that can produce fusion in
a controlled manner, a Fusor. And it's a real device, they
are used commercially as a source of neutrons. It's just so
far no one has built one that breaks even, puts out more
energy than is put in.

MADRID (AFP) — A tomb decorated with 3,500-year-old paintings has been discovered in Luxor by a Spanish Egyptologist, Spain's scientific research agency (CSIC) announced.

The tomb, part of the Dra Abu El-Naga necropolis, also includes drawings and hieroglyphics taken in part from the Book of the Dead, the ancient Egyptian funerary text, and could be that of a senior functionary named Djehuty, the CSIC said.

The person was in the service of the 18th dynasty Queen Hatshepsut, the most powerful female pharaoh and who ruled for 21 years from 1479 to 1458 BC.

The burial chamber of about 3.5 square metres (37.6 square feet) and 1.5 metres (five feet) high, is one of the first to have been entirely decorated with paintings from the era, said the Spanish Egyptologist who made the discovery, Jose Manuel Galan.

Galan is head of the team that has been carrying out excavation work for several years in the Dra Abu El-Naga necropolis on the west bank of Luxor for the CSIC, a project financed since 2004 by the Caja Madrid foundation.

Archaeologists in 2007 identified a mummy found in a tomb in the Valley of the Kings in Luxor about a century ago as that of Hatshepsut, who declared herself pharaoh after the death of her husband and half-brother Tuthmosis II and was known for sporting a false beard and dressing like a man.
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Researchers have found that the formation of coherent Fröhlich condensates requires high temperatures, making them incompatible with biological systems, and thus an unlikely component in the Penrose-Hamerhoff model of quantum consciousness.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists don't fully understand how consciousness works, and, so far, no classical theories can explain consciousness in the brain. In light of this lack of understanding, some researchers suggest that quantum mechanics may play a significant role in the workings of the mind and the brain. Quantum consciousness theories have always been controversial, and now a recent study has undercut one more component of these proposals.
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The U.S. mathematicians based their deductions on three unassailable theorems, which also happen to rhyme: 'spin' - measuring a quantum property called spin of an elementary particle; 'twin' - that a pair of particles are correlated; and 'min' - that an experimenter's choice of what to measure cannot be communicated faster than the speed of light.

If experimenters are free to choose between experiments - that is, the choice of experiments is not predetermined by past events - then the particle must also decide how to act on the spur of the moment.

Bartlett believes Conway and Kochen's work is convincing. "It's quite an interesting result. Their research falls into the broad category of exploring just how strange the quantum world is," he says.

Conway is currently presenting his theorem in a series of lectures at Princeton University.
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The world is filled with sluggish spectacles. Watching them would be painful were it not for time-lapse photography, which can make those long stories short and remarkably entertaining.

When a phenomenon happens very slowly, viewing accelerated footage helps scientists take a step back and see the big picture: At higher speeds, things that we regard as fixed take motion — even the dullest scenes spring to life.

Here are Wired Science's picks of the best time-lapse videos of nature at work.

After 20 years: New life for cold fusion?
By Katherine Harmon in 60-Second Science Blog

One team, led by Pamela Mosier-Boss, an analytical chemist at the U.S. Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center, has announced visual evidence of a fusion-like reaction. "If you have fusion going on, then you have to have neutrons," Mosier-Boss said in a statement. “People have always asked 'Where's the neutrons,'" she said, and in their presentation, they reported finding evidence of these neurons. By exposing a special kind of plastic to the reaction, patterns of minute dents (or "triple tracks" that show three close nearby forms) were made by excited neutrons created from a nuclear reaction, they report.

In other signs of fusion, Tadahiko Mizuno, an assistant professor in the department of nuclear engineering at Hokkadio University in Japan, reports having detected gamma radiation and De Ninno notes the production of helium gas in experiments; both are possible byproducts of a nuclear LENR reaction.

The hope of LENR is to replicate the powerful energy generation that occurs in stars such as our sun, but to do so at a much cooler temperature. If successful, it could provide a nearly infinite supply of clean energy here on Earth. But many remain skeptical, including the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). After reviewing a July report by LENR researchers, the DOE said the evidence "did not conclusively demonstrate the occurrence of cold fusion." DOE recommended research continue, but even its tempered response and skepticism in the scientific community has done little to quell the enthusiasm of researchers.

20 years ago, in the wake of the cold fusion excitement-turned-debacle, I noticed an interesting fact. The people doing the experiments were divided into two classes: The electrochemists who believed that fusion was happening were doing their experiments in plastic tubs and glassware, whereas the physicists who believed that no fusion was really happening were doing theirs behind walls of lead bricks. (I mentioned this to several people at the first Foresight Conference on Nanotechnology late in 1989 and was bemused to have some of the same people repeat it to me in later years, having clearly forgotten where they’d heard it. Such is the nature of memetic success.)

Cold fusion is all over the science blogosphere and news today due in large part to this experiment from SPAWAR which shows believable (at least to Naturwissenschaften reviewers) evidence of energetic particle production.

What I know about nuclear physics could be written on a palladium nucleus with a blunt crayon, but the mechanism for the (cold) fusion of deuterium just never made sense. Perhaps a tiny bit more sense is that there might be some form of electron capture (the decay mode of 7Be) going on, but in hydrogen, as proposed in this paper. That would leave free thermal neutrons to wander around and get into all kinds of trouble (generating secondary decay reactions with energetic ionizing particles). Who knows? At least Widon/Larsen’s mechanism doesn’t have electrochemistry overcoming nuclear Coulomb barriers. And inter-lattice effects are known to put electrons into other interesting quantum states, e.g. Cooper pairs.

There may be some interesting physics ahead — but I wouldn’t sell my oil stocks just yet!

March 23, 2009 -- Powered by sunlight, titanium oxide nanotubes can turn carbon dioxide into methane, which can be harnessed as an energy source, say scientists at Pennsylvania State University.

The nanotubes could dramatically reduce CO2 emissions into the atmosphere and reduce our need for fossil fuels.

"Right now there is lots of talk about burying carbon dioxide, which is ridiculous," said Craig Grimes of Penn State, who, along with Oomman Varghese, Maggie Paulose and Thomas LaTempa, co-authored a paper on the nanotubes in the journal Nano Letters. "Instead we can collect the waste out of the smoke stack, put it though a converter, and presto, use sunlight to change [CO2] back into fuel."

The nanotubes are arranged vertically, almost like empty honeycomb. Over the top of the nanotubes sits a thin, reddish-brown layer of copper oxide. Both the copper and titanium oxide act as catalysts, speeding up reactions that take place naturally.

When sunlight hits the copper oxide, carbon dioxide is converted into carbon monoxide. When sunlight hits the titanium oxide, water molecules split apart. The hydrogen freed from the water and the carbon freed from CO2 then recombine to create burnable methane, and the spare oxygen atoms pair up to create breathable oxygen.

ScienceDaily (Mar. 25, 2009) — Over the past few years, honey bee keepers have experienced problems due to Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), which has hurt honey bee populations, causing some growers of fruits, nuts and vegetables to wonder how their crops will be pollinated in the future.

A new study published in the Annals of the Entomological Society of America shows that wild bees, which are not affected by CCD, may serve as a pollination alternative.

In the article “Wild Bees (Hymenoptera: Apoidea: Anthophila) of the Michigan Highbush Blueberry Agroecosystem,” authors Julianna K. Tuell (Michigan State University), John S. Ascher (American Museum of Natural History), and Rufus Isaacs (Michigan State University) report the results of a three-year study which took place on 15 southwestern Michigan blueberry farms. Using traps and direct observation, the authors identified 166 bee species, 112 of which were active during the blueberry blooming period. Many of these species visit more flowers per minute and deposit more pollen per visit than honey bees (Apis mellifera L.), and most of them are potential blueberry pollinators.

“This should help growers know what kinds of bees are in the fields so that they can make informed decisions about whether they should modify crop management practices in order to help conserve natural populations of bees,” said Dr. Julianna Tuell.

Unlike honey bees, which live together in hives, most of the bees found by the authors were solitary bees that nest in the soil or in wood cavities. While soil–nesting bees may be difficult to manage, the authors see potential for cavity–nesting bees, such as several species of mason bees, to be managed by growers who can support their populations by providing nesting materials.

The blast that shook the Chernobyl nuclear power plant more than 20 years ago, sending a highly radioactive plume of fallout into the air, still affects local populations of butterflies and bees and other insects, according to a new study. The study appears to argue against the idea put forward by previous researchers that the region around the power plant, contaminated by radiation and off limits to most humans, has become a sort of post-apocalyptic Eden [The New York Times], in which animals can live unmolested. However, the new results are stirring up controversy.

20 Years After Valdez Spill, Eagles Are Healthy; 7 Other Species Still Hurting

Twenty years have passed, and oil from the Exxon Valdez spill still taints Alaska’s shores and waters: roughly 21,000 of the original 11 million gallons remain, and have spread up to 450 miles from the spill site in Prince William Sound.

A report by the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council—a state and federal partnership formed to oversee ecosystem recovery efforts—lists nine species, including the bald eagle, as fully recovered, but many of the area’s fish populations remain low. Sea otters and harlequin ducks continue to die because they dig for food in the sand and release buried oil, pockets of which remain buried in small portions of the intertidal zone hard hit by the spill. Seven distinct species, including sea otters, killer whales and clams, still are considered to be “recovering” from the initial effects of the oil [Seattle Times].

A South African couple was witness to a 300-foot long black, silent, triangular-shaped UFO that "blocked out the stars" as it moved across the sky over their back yard.

The 10-second sighting by these two pilots in May 1996 is something that they will never forget.

Following is the original account from the witnesses. Only minor edits were made.

We are Brian & Lynette van Malsen from a town called Springs 50 miles east of Johannesburg, Gauteng South Africa.

And we saw what your witnesses saw in your UFO news of AZ town in exact detail only 13 year's earlier.

We are both retired pilots and very aware of things in the sky. And we can recall our sighting like it happened yesterday.

No kidding. It was May 1996 ( fall ) at sun set just after 5 p.m. We had just finished supper. at 6:45 p.m. and went for a walk in our back yard to look for a satellite that used to track NW to SE at that time. We saw our satellite and started to walk North back to the house and as we walked I looked up at the evening sky.

The very next instant I saw the UFO ( clear as daylight ) moving South to North at about 3 times the speed of a commercial jet, round about 7,500 to 10,000 feet.

Shouted to Lynette to look and she saw it too. I immediately listened for sound, but nothing, thinking at first it was some
NATO stealth jet?

But over my suburb in South Africa at low altitude - impossible?

Joburg Int ATC would have it on radar as this is a special rules flying area ith three military air base in a 60 mile radius - Dunnotar military flying school down the road a few miles ( flying SAAF Harvard's / T6 Texans noisy & slow ) and then Waterkoof and Swartkops airbases near Pretoria.

We got to watch this UFO for about 10 seconds and this is what we saw.

A black triangular shape, but with more of a wing profile, 300+ feet long , blocking out the stars. Not a sound, with dull red wing tip lights also down the trailing edges of the wings. I know of nothing that can move that fast without noise.

ScienceDaily (Mar. 25, 2009) — Over the past few years, honey bee keepers have experienced problems due to Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), which has hurt honey bee populations, causing some growers of fruits, nuts and vegetables to wonder how their crops will be pollinated in the future.

A new study published in the Annals of the Entomological Society of America shows that wild bees, which are not affected by CCD, may serve as a pollination alternative.

In the article “Wild Bees (Hymenoptera: Apoidea: Anthophila) of the Michigan Highbush Blueberry Agroecosystem,” authors Julianna K. Tuell (Michigan State University), John S. Ascher (American Museum of Natural History), and Rufus Isaacs (Michigan State University) report the results of a three-year study which took place on 15 southwestern Michigan blueberry farms. Using traps and direct observation, the authors identified 166 bee species, 112 of which were active during the blueberry blooming period. Many of these species visit more flowers per minute and deposit more pollen per visit than honey bees (Apis mellifera L.), and most of them are potential blueberry pollinators.

“This should help growers know what kinds of bees are in the fields so that they can make informed decisions about whether they should modify crop management practices in order to help conserve natural populations of bees,” said Dr. Julianna Tuell.

Unlike honey bees, which live together in hives, most of the bees found by the authors were solitary bees that nest in the soil or in wood cavities. While soil–nesting bees may be difficult to manage, the authors see potential for cavity–nesting bees, such as several species of mason bees, to be managed by growers who can support their populations by providing nesting materials.

The blast that shook the Chernobyl nuclear power plant more than 20 years ago, sending a highly radioactive plume of fallout into the air, still affects local populations of butterflies and bees and other insects, according to a new study. The study appears to argue against the idea put forward by previous researchers that the region around the power plant, contaminated by radiation and off limits to most humans, has become a sort of post-apocalyptic Eden [The New York Times], in which animals can live unmolested. However, the new results are stirring up controversy.

20 Years After Valdez Spill, Eagles Are Healthy; 7 Other Species Still Hurting

Twenty years have passed, and oil from the Exxon Valdez spill still taints Alaska’s shores and waters: roughly 21,000 of the original 11 million gallons remain, and have spread up to 450 miles from the spill site in Prince William Sound.

A report by the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council—a state and federal partnership formed to oversee ecosystem recovery efforts—lists nine species, including the bald eagle, as fully recovered, but many of the area’s fish populations remain low. Sea otters and harlequin ducks continue to die because they dig for food in the sand and release buried oil, pockets of which remain buried in small portions of the intertidal zone hard hit by the spill. Seven distinct species, including sea otters, killer whales and clams, still are considered to be “recovering” from the initial effects of the oil [Seattle Times].

A South African couple was witness to a 300-foot long black, silent, triangular-shaped UFO that "blocked out the stars" as it moved across the sky over their back yard.

The 10-second sighting by these two pilots in May 1996 is something that they will never forget.

Following is the original account from the witnesses. Only minor edits were made.

We are Brian & Lynette van Malsen from a town called Springs 50 miles east of Johannesburg, Gauteng South Africa.

And we saw what your witnesses saw in your UFO news of AZ town in exact detail only 13 year's earlier.

We are both retired pilots and very aware of things in the sky. And we can recall our sighting like it happened yesterday.

No kidding. It was May 1996 ( fall ) at sun set just after 5 p.m. We had just finished supper. at 6:45 p.m. and went for a walk in our back yard to look for a satellite that used to track NW to SE at that time. We saw our satellite and started to walk North back to the house and as we walked I looked up at the evening sky.

The very next instant I saw the UFO ( clear as daylight ) moving South to North at about 3 times the speed of a commercial jet, round about 7,500 to 10,000 feet.

Shouted to Lynette to look and she saw it too. I immediately listened for sound, but nothing, thinking at first it was some
NATO stealth jet?

But over my suburb in South Africa at low altitude - impossible?

Joburg Int ATC would have it on radar as this is a special rules flying area ith three military air base in a 60 mile radius - Dunnotar military flying school down the road a few miles ( flying SAAF Harvard's / T6 Texans noisy & slow ) and then Waterkoof and Swartkops airbases near Pretoria.

We got to watch this UFO for about 10 seconds and this is what we saw.

A black triangular shape, but with more of a wing profile, 300+ feet long , blocking out the stars. Not a sound, with dull red wing tip lights also down the trailing edges of the wings. I know of nothing that can move that fast without noise.

"Up until a few days before the killing, Li held a part- time job delivering newspapers in Edmonton. He was well thought-of by his boss and considered a nice guy, if a bit quiet and shy.

Carlson documented several cases in northern Alberta communities where people believing they were "turning Windigo" would go into convulsions, make terrifying animal sounds and beg their captors to kill them before they started eating people.

In last month's bus case, Li allegedly butchered McLean's body, brandishing the victim's severed head at the men who trapped him on the bus until police could arrive.

He was later accused of eating McLean's flesh.

When he appeared in a Portage La Prairie courthouse on charges of second-degree murder, the only words Li reportedly uttered were pleas for someone to kill him.

A lot of his reported behaviour eerily mirrors the Windigo cases recounted in the newspaper feature that Li helped deliver to Edmonton homes just days before McLean was killed, one of the most gruesome slayings in modern Canadian history.

Several media reports called McLean's killing unprecedented - an unspeakable, random attack the likes of which has never been seen in Canada.

According to a facebook tribute page [here] to Canadian bus victim Tim McClean (who incidentally worked for a carnival), his favorite band was The Insane Clown Posse...and he was known as JoKAwiLd (which according to his myspace page was tattooed across his back)...Mix this with the death of Heath Ledger, can this get any weirder at this point?

LAW enforcement agencies are seeking scientists to develop an artificial nose that can detect the smell of fear as terrorists pass through security at airports.

The US Department of Homeland Security is advertising for specialists to devise airport scanners that will sniff out “deceptive individuals”.

The technology builds on recent breakthroughs in finding human scent-prints which, many researchers believe, may be as unique to individuals as fingerprints.

Body odours also change perceptibly according to mood. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have already produced a gel that acts like the smell receptors in the human nose. Now they are trying to create a version that can isolate the tangy smell of adrenaline, the stress hormone, so that nervous passengers or those with a guilty conscience can be singled out.

So you're in your early 20s and your brain has finally reached adulthood. Enjoy it while it lasts. The peak of your brain's powers comes at around age 22 and lasts for just half a decade. From there it's downhill all the way.
The peak of your brain's powers comes at age 22 and lasts for just half a decade

This long, slow decline begins at about 27 and runs throughout adulthood, although different abilities decline at different rates. Curiously, the ones that start to go first - those involved with executive control, such as planning and task coordination - are the ones that took the longest to appear during your teens. These abilities are associated with the prefrontal and temporal cortices, which are still maturing well into your early 20s.

Episodic memory, which is involved in recalling events, also declines rapidly, while the brain's processing speed slows down and working memory is able to store less information.

So just how fast is the decline? According to research by Art Kramer, a psychologist at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, and others, from our mid-20s we lose up to 1 point per decade on a test called the mini mental state examination (see graph). This is a 30-point test of arithmetic, language and basic motor skills that is typically used to assess how fast people with dementia are declining. A 3 to 4 point drop is considered clinically significant. In other words, the decline people typically experience between 25 and 65 has real-world consequences.

That all sounds rather depressing, but there is an upside. The abilities that decline in adulthood rely on "fluid intelligence" - the underlying processing speed of your brain. But so-called "crystallised intelligence", which is roughly equivalent to wisdom, heads in the other direction. So even as your fluid intelligence sags, along with your face and your bottom, your crystallised intelligence keeps growing along with your waistline. The two appear to cancel each other out, at least until we reach our 60s and 70s (see "The five ages of the brain: 5 Old age").

There's another reason to be cheerful. Staying mentally and physically active, eating a decent diet and avoiding cigarettes, booze and mind-altering drugs seem to slow down the inevitable decline. And if it is too late to live the clean life, don't panic. You still have one more chance to turn it around.

Sunday, April 05, 2009
A Week Of Body Counts
I predicted an increasing build-up in copycat activity as the calendar ticks off days moving towards April 20, 2009, the tenth anniversary of Columbine.

Here's the week that just was:

Saturday, March 27.

A 23-year-old beheads his younger sister Bianca, 5, and kills Samantha Revelus, 17, at their home in Milton, Massachusetts. The killer is killed by police officers.

Sunday, March 29.

Seven patients and a nurse were killed during a Sunday morning shooting at a Carthage, North Carolina, nursing home. The 45-year-old man accused of carrying out the attack was shot by a police officer, and his condition "is currently unknown."

Friday, April 3.

A 41-year-old gunman barricaded the back door of a community center with his car and then opened fire on a room full of immigrants taking a citizenship class Friday, killing 13 people before dying by suicide, in Binghamton, New York.

Saturday, April 4.

The bodies of five children between the ages of 7 and 16 years old and their father were found dead in separate locations south of Seattle, near Orting, Washington State on Saturday. The father apparently killed his children before dying by suicide near a casino some distance away from their home.

Three Pittsburgh police officers responding to a domestic-disturbance call on the morning of Saturday, were killed when a man, who is hiding and waiting, armed with an AK-47, opened fire on them.

Other very recent shootings include these:

A gunman killed 10 people and himself in Samson, Alabama; shootings that began with a traffic stop in Oakland, California, left four police officers and the gunman dead; an apparent murder-suicide in Santa Clara, California, left six dead. At an Illinois church, a man shot and killed the pastor and stabbed two parishioners, and a 17-year-old in Germany killed 15 people in two small towns before dying in a shootout with police.

Sunday, April 05, 2009
Highway Serial Killers: Myth or Reality?
Wasn't the theory that serial killers happened to be truckers using super highways to disrupt law enforcement investigations the plot of a few cinema and television fictions already?

According to the Associated Press for April 5, 2009, the FBI suspects there's a link between long-haul truckers and serial killers, and runs a national program to track murders along popular trucking routes.

Los Angeles Times reports that federal authorities first made the connection five years ago while investigating a string of unsolved killings along Interstate 40 in Oklahoma and several other states.

After patterns started emerging, the FBI launched the Highway Serial Killings Initiative to track suspicious slayings and suspect truckers.

A computer database now includes more than 500 female murder victims whose bodies were discarded at truck stops, motels and other locations.

Intriguingly, in July 2008, in an attempt to dismiss urban myths, the The Federal Bureau of Investigation released a report examining misinformation that typically surrounds serial killer cases.

Although serial murders account for less than one percent of all homicide cases, media attention and Hollywood thrillers have cemented certain myths into the American psyche.

Even as mega-banks topple, Juan Enriquez says the big reboot is yet to come. But don't look for it on your ballot -- or in the stock exchange. It'll come from science labs, and it promises keener bodies and minds. Our kids are going to be ... different.

Anyone who watches Top Gear will know that truckers are murderers, especially they target women of ill-repute. On a more serious note, if you want to kill someone and get away with it, don't do it where you live.

Anyone who watches Top Gear will know that truckers are murderers, especially they target women of ill-repute. On a more serious note, if you want to kill someone and get away with it, don't do it where you live.

I've not watched it.

Before i passed out last night - coast2coast had a lady on or was going to be on talking about that subject.

Did an experimental vaccine save a scientist in Germany from Ebola? The lives of others who work with the deadly virus might ride on the answer.

On 12 March a woman working at the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine (BNI) in Hamburg accidentally pricked her finger with a needle carrying Ebola virus.

There is no approved vaccine for Ebola, and such injuries have killed lab workers before. So she was given an experimental vaccine consisting of a live vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) carrying an Ebola protein.

Telling the front from the back of a mask can be more difficult than it seems. Thanks to an effect called the hollow-mask illusion, the brain can have trouble deciding if the image is convex or concave.

But, it seems, not everyone struggles to correctly determine the mask's orientation. New research shows that people with schizophrenia are immune to the effect – a finding that means the illusion could provide a diagnostic test for the condition.

In the study, volunteers were monitored in an fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) scanner as they looked at photos. Some of these were normal pictures of faces, but others had been inverted as in the hollow-mask illusion. All the participants with schizophrenia could distinguish between the two types of photos, whereas control volunteers without the condition were fooled 99 per cent of the time.